EW talks to the strippers from "Magic Mike"; Channing Tatum, Matthew McConaughey, Matt Bomer and Joe Manganiello. And boy, do they make the Steven Soderbergh movie sound classy. Manganiello (who plays "Big Dick Richie") wants to make sure people understand that unlike "Showgirls," this movie is "intentionally funny." For example, "In one scene, I'm painted gold with a fig leaf over by dick, dry humping 200 women."

Tatum pitched the idea for "Magic Mike" to Soderbergh (they worked together in "Haywire") based on his own experiences as a teen stripper. Apparently the subject matter got Soderbergh's attention, amid his infatuation with B-movies. For Tatum, it's about "that feeling of ‘I had a plan, the plan went to shit, now I don’t know what to do.’"

Among the revelations in the EW interview, Tatum posits that no one would care if an actress had a similar past as a stripper if she was a good enough actress ("I think if it turned out that Meryl Streep used to be a stripper, nobody would care”). Unlikely. Clearly, being objectified as an actor is hard work. "There’s that moment where you come off the stage for the first time and you’re sitting alone backstage in your thong," recalls Manganiello, "sweating, basically coming out of a trance, thinking, 'What did I just do?' It’s like waking up out of a blackout covered in blood. You’re like, ‘What just happened? Can I go to jail for this?’”

Who's the movie for? Everybody! "We didn’t make it specifically for the gay community or the chick community," says Tatum. "This is supposed to be hilarious. And if guys don’t get that, they’re just insecure."

"Magic Mike" will close the Los Angeles Film Festival on June 24 and hit theaters June 29. The trailer is below; it reveals Magic Mike's true passion - custom furniture making! And the ladies swoon...

Thompson on Hollywood

Born and raised in Manhattan, Anne Thompson grew up going to the Thalia and The New Yorker and wound up at grad Cinema Studies at NYU. She worked at United Artists and Film Comment before heading west as that magazine's west coast editor. She wrote for the LA Weekly, Sight and Sound, Empire, The New York Times and Entertainment Weekly before serving as West Coast Editor of Premiere. She wrote for The Washington Post, The London Observer, Wired, More, and Vanity Fair, and did staff stints at The Hollywood Reporter and Variety. She eventually took her blog Thompson on Hollywood to Indiewire. She taught film criticism at USC Critical Studies, and continues to host the fall semester of “Sneak Previews” for UCLA Extension.